Know the Type: Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus

Welcome back to our series celebrating authors through readings of their most famous works! Things have taken a turn for the terrifying this week, however, as we continue our celebration of Halloween horrors…
On a rainy summer afternoon at the Villa Diodati, near Geneva, in 1816, four people entertained themselves with a challenge: to write as spine-chilling a tale as possible. The poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron; Byron’s physician, John Polidori; and 18-year-old Mary Shelley all took to the task. Polidori created “The Vampyre” - the first novella to feature a blood-sucking creature - while Mary’s creation went on to revolutionise literature and popular culture. She took the name of the Creature’s creator from Castle Frankenstein in Germany, the birthplace of the alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel - some say he could have served as inspiration for Victor Frankenstein’s morbid experiments…
(Music by Zapsplat.com)